Posted: 04th Aug, 2010 By: MarkJ

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against an ISP advert in the national press for BT Retail's new up to 40Mbps FTTC based fibre optic broadband service -
BT-Infinity. The advert effectively claimed that BT's new product allowed content, such as high quality videos, to be uploaded and downloaded instantly. This is of course very misleading.
The new 40Mbps product is certainly a lot faster and will get you the data at a considerably quicker rate than slower connections, but to claim that it can "
upload and share high quality photos and videos instantly; Download your favourite music instantly; Enjoy multiple websites and online content instantly; Stream HD movies and TV shows instantly" is simply wrong; at least on some of the points.
ASA Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that consumers would understand the claims "Upload and share high quality photos and videos instantly", "Download your favourite music instantly", "Enjoy multiple websites and online content instantly" and "Stream HD movies and TV shows instantly", as well as "The birth of the instant internet", to mean that BTs fibre optic broadband could deliver the listed activities straightaway, or with no noticeable delay.
We noted that BT had provided a list of the times they believed it would take to complete the activities stated in the ad, using their fibre optic broadband. However, we also noted that we had not seen evidence that substantiated those times, or that showed what speeds could be achieved by customers using BTs fibre optic broadband, and that those speeds would be achievable by customers at times of high user demand and with non-optimal computer set-ups.
We noted the three customer profiles and two videos submitted by BT, however, we did not consider that profiles and testimonials alone were sufficient to substantiate claims relating to the speed of a broadband service. Because we had not seen evidence to support the claims made in the ad, we concluded that it was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness).
The ad must not appear again in its current form.
Furthermore the idea that an FTTC service can upload a "
high quality" video instantly is ridiculous because videos come in all different lengths and formats, there's no way to apply such a blanket statement to them.
FTTC also has a slower upload speed of 2Mbps for consumer packages and 10Mbps for businesses, with the 2Mbps option being not a million miles from that offered by existing ADSL2+ services. Good luck uploading a high quality video "instantly" with 2Mbps connection speeds, unless it's very small in size.
That said and this is by no means a dismissal of BT's otherwise strong FTTC service, which starts at £19.99 per month when combined with 40GB of monthly downloads and rises to £24.99 if you want an "unlimited" (Fair Usage Policy) package. You can now bundle phone calls with it too.